Valrhona Guanaja Grué

In a perfect world, Valrhona’s Guanaja Grué would be one of my primary go-to chocolates. In that same world, I wouldn’t still be dealing with a non-healing toe which, despite two surgeries and going-on-a-year of being problematic, continues to plague me. I’d have a pet pug that didn’t shed, pistachios would grow everyday on a bonsai by my bed, and I wouldn’t sometimes feel lonely at night. On the plus side, in my perfect world I’d have the same wonderful family I have now, the same beloved blog-and-physical-world friends lighting up my life, and I’d be writing as much, if not more, than I currently do… except maybe I’d be getting paid to do so.

For the moment, though, these are pipe dreams. And therefore while I adore the rich, rich, rich chocolatey nature of Valrhona’s Guanaja chocolate, I can’t find it here in Australia.

Guess I’d best just reminisce and make do, then.

Valrhona Guanaja Grué

From the moment I unwrapped this glossy dark French creation, I knew I was looking at one heckuva chocolate bar. Or, to be more specific, I was inhaling one. I don’t have the best nose in the world for scents, so the fact that the Guanaja overwhelmed and excited me with its ultra chocolatey perfume boded well. I feel a bit ridiculous reiterating how “chocolatey” this chocolate was, but that’s truly the most apt description. It’s a complex chocolate, for sure, but it’s also simply the epitome, the manifestation, the reality of what you expect chocolate to taste like.

Because this is my chocolate party and I’ll rabbit on if I want to, I’m going to give a bit more detail about what makes Valrhona’s Guanaja so deeply satisfying and pleasurable. First, the aroma has notes of cedar, smoke, and raspberry, and these translate into the taste without ever overpowering the cocoa flavours.

The nibs (the grué) are crisp and crunchy, contributing bitter coffee tones whilst accentuating the Guanaja’s soft wood flavours. The cacao content is 70%, yet the chocolate is not bitter, acidic, or tangy in the way that Lindt’s 70%, for example, can be. In fact, even with the assertive punch of the nibs, I find this chocolate rather sweet, with hints of molasses and brown sugar.

If you’ll forgive me writing what I know many people think of as silliness, I might jot down a few of the complex flavours that emerged during my various tastings of the Guanaja Grué. As well as the aforementioned wood, raspberry, molasses, and brown sugar notes, I tasted fudgy brownies, toast, blackberries, long blacks, earth, a slight tang akin to mascarpone, bourbon vanilla, and honey.

Yet for all these layers of flavour, the best description of the Guanaja Grué would involve words such as silky smooth, unctuous, lingering, rich, and ultimately, undoubtedly, chocolatey.

If only someone would start shipping me cartons of this on a regular basis, I could then concentrate on tracking down my self-replenishing pistachio bonsai. Is that really so much to ask?

Today I ate awesome chocolate. Some things are sucky, but mostly life is good. And Be Fri is still damn awesome, I still want to be like her when I grow up, even if she doesn’t send me chocolate. Tomorrow I start bonsai’ing a pistachio tree – how fun!

1. I am silly and always go for the chocolate with pop rocks, pistachios, whole pieces of bread, bacon, etc, and overlook chocolate like this. Similarly, my beer must have raspberries or orange rind out the wazoo. But invariably, the too-complicated stuff disappoints. Next chocolate run, I will try Valrhona!

2. I ❤ Sichuan eggplant. I also like it in many Mediterranean dishes. But I have had one too many soggy, oily, nastily bread crumbed eggplants in sub-par Italian joints.

L-Izzle: We really need to start up a chocolate (and condiment, for your sake) import business.

Simply Life: Hmm, must say it’s more the taste than the texture I like! 😀

Agnes: Dear Diary, last night my Be Fri made me smile and feel better about the world. She is pretty cool. Pistachio bonsai searching has been postponed – doctor visit took precedence, but I’ma keepin’ my eyes open anyway.

Johanna: I know! It’s such a hard life, not having this easily accessible! And you make a good point about filthy lucre… I could travel so much more if money didn’t exist.

The Hungry Scholar: I hope you did, or that you do after your dentis appointment. I posted your chocolate yesterday too! Win on both sides! 😀

Camille: Exactly. I probably should have emphasised how delicious the smoky crunchy deeply rich nibs were here. And you know what? I can see eggplant and nibs working. It’ll be like…. the pastry-chef-potentially-vegan-version of a Mexican mole.

Lisa: Teehee! I honestly don’t know if I could cope – we’ve always had non-shedding dogs in my family because of my mum’s allergies. I wonder what a poodle-pug corss would look like..?

The Sugar Junkie: It needn’t be torture! This chocolate, and most of the dark chocolates on this blog, are dairy free – good dark chocolate should ALWAYS be dairy free, which is why Cadbury/Nestle/Hershey’s are so lame. Just look for the chocolates here that have the vegan tag 🙂 No one should be bereft of chocolate!

Lauren: As you know, I’m all for the crazy chocolates too, but I must say my true love to wonderfully complex and (often quite bitter) dark chocolate. If by “bread” you’re referring to the Theo one… I’ve got that in my stash 🙂 And thank you for the bed compliment. I HATE THE BLOODY THING. (Not really. But kind of.)

I’d love a little puggy too! They have such cute dispositions and I love their squashed faces. Are you allergic to them? I am really allergic to them so in my perfect world they wouldn’t cause any allergies. Oh and they wouldn’t chew my shoes-they’re important too 😉

I love finding so much chocolate here! 🙂 Funfetti cake, to answer the question you posed on my blog, is basically cake with sprinkles. You add the sprinkles into the batter before baking it to give it a rainbow studded look. It doesn’t taste much different, but looks festive and fun!

Toast! I would love a toast-flavoured chocolate. A cinnamon-toast flavoured choclate would be especially awesome.

For a few months Andy was srsly into bonsai, to the extent that we borrowed books about it from the library, and I remember seeing tiny pomegranate bonsai. Thus, I see no reason why pistachio wouldn’t work (though it may take some genetic engineering to have fresh new nuts on it every day of the year…)

Lorraine: I’m not sure if I’m allergic or not – my mum is so I’ve never spent much time around shedding dogs. Mostly I just hate the messiness of shed fur! 😀

Baking Serendipity: Well, you learn something new everyday, don’t you? I still can’t help giggling that someone actually made a special name for that, though… 🙂

Theresa: Did you see the Chocomize chocolate awhile back, which was dark chocolate with cinnamon toast cereal on it? I think that’s a close as I’ll be getting for awhile, but a melted-sugary-cinnamony-toast-flavoured chocolate would be divine… Um, are you offering to get started on the genetic engineering? Kthanxbai! 😉

OK. I’ve packed our bags and enough food to keep us going until we find a kitchen (you like eggplant, right?). If we leave now we should reach your perfect world in time for supper. We can have as much calorie free food as we like and then get into our (respective) unlonely beds that someone else assembled for us and sleep in for as long as we need, somehow without wasting any of the perfect day ahead of us. Plan?

Conor: Aww. AWW. Thank you. Can this not be our plan but our way of life? Because if you say yes I’ll meet you kerbside, in fifteen minutes, with my jar of cookie dough peanut butter which will magically have transformed into having the nutritional value of aspargus once we arrive at The Perfect World (TPW). I particularly like the idea of the unlonely beds.